


a grace it had, devouring

by Sister



Category: SHAKESPEARE William - Works, The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 06:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12359472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sister/pseuds/Sister
Summary: Mortals. All alike, in their way. All stinking of birth and death and fixed timelines, amniotic fluid and grave worms, marking the moons in menstrual blood and the gain and loss of fat. Distasteful. How shaming, to be so enslaved to one.++The Tempest, from Ariel's eyes.





	a grace it had, devouring

**Author's Note:**

> y'all i wrote this like four years ago and have been pissy ever since that there's nowhere to put it. today i'm putting it on ao3. shakespeare fandom, ya girl loves ya.

a grace it had, devouring

\--Prospero, _The Tempest_ , Act III Scene 3

+++

Before.

There is darkness and darkness, womb-like, though Ariel was hatched in the belly of a storm cloud and knows nothing of the insides of mammals. It must be something akin to this, though, close and folded and searing, the heat from his form radiating outwards and slicking the walls of the tree. His hands find the smooth interior wood, but of course the veins are laced with blood magic and he could no more escape than become a tree himself.

  
Time passes. The movement of time, its sluggish left-to-right plodding, is new to Ariel. Many things are new to Ariel in this form. Skin that rips. Hair that tangles. His soul tethered inside the barrier of a body. Thoughts, where once there was only desire. Passage of hours where there had been only a single instant, formless and all-encompassing, like Ariel himself. The concept of a “he,” of a “him.” Ariel was no more a he than Lyssa and Achlys were shes, but now he is, now he feels himself rooted in a maleness he finds distasteful. Everything that is mortal is distasteful.

  
Thoughts are new and skin is new and both are entertaining. For the first year. Pain is new and memories are new and both are entertaining. For the second year. His voice is new. The third. There is a little power left to him, just enough to mock, just enough that the hair he tears regrows and the skin he breaks reheals and the fingers he bites off return themselves to his hands. He can’t see the blood but he can feel it, hot and wet, knows what it looks like from the sailors he once impaled on their own masts. Ariel swallows hours however he can.

  
He forgets how it was. Sometimes a prickle comes across his arms and he flashes to a time when he was dilute, consciousness foamy and scattered, racing the wind, but it fades, everything fades, until here he is again, bound up inside the coffin of a pine trunk, a spirit locked in a boy locked in a tree. His mind spirals.

  
Who did this? Who did? Did this? Who? This?

  
Sycorax.

  
The word is a curse. Words are new and curses are new and both are entertaining. For the fourth year. The fifth. A decade. More. Less? Heat. Skin. Darkness. Blood.

  
Madness is new, and entertaining. Ariel is always screaming, but he forgets, sometimes.

  
+++

  
Then.

  
Light, a pain-dazzle. He’s blinded. He falls, sprawled against sandy earth that grates against his skin. Air, salty, cool, the cry of gulls. He gurgles, licks the ground, feels his muscles unknot. Someone is speaking.

  
“—kisses at my feet, pitiful creature. What manner of boy is this, Caliban? No, we shall discover presently.”

  
The sun. The smell of green things. Ariel lifts his head. There is a man, old enough, cloaked in burgundy against the gray of his beard. He waves a driftwood staff in the air, chanting. Beside him stands that Caliban, older now than when Ariel first knew him, kelp hair gone wild and scales creeping across his cheeks.

  
All at once there is a jerk under Ariel’s skin, a loosening, and he is free, he is returned, he is formless spirit shot through with shafts of light and a reach domed over the island and down into the sea. He curls and shifts and is everything and nothing, he is now and past and future, and then he is _caught_ , his essence snagged in a fist, dragged down and down and back into that hated boy-skin. Ariel shudders against the earth, mouth full of sand, defeated.

  
“So, then,” the man says. “So. Caliban, help him stand.”

  
Caliban dips and shuffles to Ariel, grabs him loosely under his shoulders and hauls him upright. Caliban has that brine scent of sea creatures—has more of his father in him than his mother. Ariel sways on his feet, relearning his prison after the burst of freedom. Caliban keeps a hand on his arm, steadying him, and Ariel hates him for it.

  
The old man is stark against the ferns and waxy green leaves of the brush behind him. He’s a straight-backed human, this one, craggy faced and taller than Ariel. His eyes are dark pits under wild white eyebrows and his gaze scrapes down Ariel’s body, leaves him raw, exposed.

  
“I am Prospero,” the old man says. “I have freed you from your torment, spirit, and in return you shall do me leal service.” He waves his driftwood staff about his head and points it at Ariel. Black ink explodes from the end, squid-like, and curls around Ariel’s chest, up over his shoulders and down his arms, icy and oozing. It disappears beneath his skin but Ariel can still feel it, marking him. His blood is dirty with it.

  
There’s an old reality here, superimposed over the new. Ariel can see Sycorax and Prospero at once, forcing him into flesh and ordering gratitude for it. Prospero. Ariel has a name, now. His hatred has always needed a name.

  
“What are you called, spirit?” Prospero asks, smile lazy, complacent.

  
Ariel would rather tear out his own vocal cords, but he’s tried that before, and they grow back. He spits instead, hot saliva that hisses where it finds the ground. Caliban backs away from him. “You will wish you had not done that,” Prospero says.

  
+++

  
Now.

  
Ariel is called to Prospero’s side twice that night, high in the summer season when the dark is deep and sticky and full of the sounds of insects. This second time, closer to morning than not, Prospero makes no move to bestir himself when Ariel appears at his elbow. Prospero sits on one of the great palm trunks that border the firepit in the clearing, hunched over his knees and muttering, that burgundy cloak of power spread like a train from his shoulders. The fingers of his right hand twist and jab at the flames where burning shapes appear and dissolve in turns.

  
Prospero’s face is a grim mask. Ariel waits for his orders.

  
“Do you know anything of pyromancy, Ariel?” Prospero asks, eyes still on the fire.

  
“No, master,” Ariel says, because divination is a game for mortals.

  
“It takes great skill and patience and a stoic nature. One might look into the flames, but only fortune rules what is seen. It’s not all pleasantries, to be sure. Wealth and wonder, perhaps, but also sickness, tragedy, pain.” Prospero turns his head to look at Ariel at last. “Why, I might see my own death.”

  
Something slithers in Ariel’s stomach. “Truly, master?” he asks.

  
Prospero levels him a narrow look. A flock of sparking birds rises from the campfire to dance in the living smoke. Prospero snaps his fingers and they vanish. “What do you see? Concentrate.”

  
Ariel doesn’t care what he sees, but obedience isn’t a matter of personal interest. He creeps closer to the fire, searching the blue heart for whatever it is Prospero wants to hear. The raw heat sears along his torso and falling embers threaten the cotton of his kilt, but deep in the cracking wood an image is taking shape. Ariel leans closer, feels blisters form and burst and heal on his cheeks and forehead. Blue for the hull and decking, orange for the crew, yellow sails spread wide: a ship sails over a pinewood ocean.

  
“You see it now,” Prospero says. “It seems we shall soon have visitors. I recognize the ship. Important visitors indeed.” Ariel wonders if these men will be allowed to drop anchor alive, pictures Prospero ringed in skulls. “Arrange a welcome party. A storm, I think, would be most fitting. Waves taller than the masthead, lightning like the rage of Jupiter, thunder to drown cannons. Hot rain, blinding, and wind, of course. Blow the _Misty Treader_ straight to our beaches.”

  
“In pieces?” Ariel asks.

  
“There is nothing in this world I desire more, Ariel,” Prospero says, opening his fingers to the fire once more, “than to watch as the _Treader_ is torn plank from nail and naiads feast on the bones of every screaming sailor. Do you know, Italian sailors can’t swim. They think it’s bad luck to learn.” Prospero flicks his thumb and the flame ship explodes, a tiny firework that leaves spots in Ariel’s vision. Red light shifts over Prospero’s face, colors him monstrous. Ariel concentrates on the white of Prospero’s beard and the sagging skin under his throat: human, he is human, he is breakable.

  
“But that is pleasure denied to me. There is a larger plan that must come to fruition. There shall be a storm, yes, a tempest from the gullet of Neptune himself, but the ship must be saved, the crew unharmed and the nobles deposited on the island.”

  
“A difficult task, master,” Ariel says, and it’s true. Some thirty years ago such a thing would have been nothing, no more effort than puffing his cheeks for the wind and kicking his toes in the surf for the waves. A moment’s work, an hour’s amusement. But Prospero has returned his powers in miniature, and he has all the strength of a fledgling albatross.

  
“Do this, and freedom will soon follow.”

  
Ariel can hardly help himself. The word is a red flag to a bull, an apple to a starving child. He fights to keep himself in check, no matter that Prospero has dangled the word for him like a worm on a hook for years. It’s a very sharp hook, but Ariel will bite every time.

  
“Yes, master,” he says solemnly, but his body gives him away, shivering in and out of phase. Prospero growls. The old man pulls himself to his feet and stalks over to Ariel. The years have bent him, some, but still he looms over Ariel’s boy form, close enough that his breath gusts into Ariel’s face. Prospero’s hand comes up to grip Ariel’s jaw, iron-hard and bruising.

  
“There will be no mistakes, my dainty Ariel. My bird. There will be no failure in this.”

  
Prospero’s daughter is abed in the hut on the other side of the clearing. She sleeps through much, she always has. If Ariel had his full powers, he could push his hand through Prospero’s belly and tear out his organs.

  
“Yes, master,” Ariel says.

  
+++

  
Then.

  
What Prospero cannot understand is that Ariel is indifferent to pain. He spent years amusing himself with different agonies in his tree-prison before he lost all interest. Pain is boring and mortal and beneath him. Prospero’s torture spells are powerful, but if he is looking to master Ariel through simple discomfort, he will be sorely disappointed. Ariel bears the ghostly pinches and needle-stabs that crawl across his skin with perfect apathy.

  
Caliban approaches him late on the third day, when Sol’s chariot is no more than a reddish smear on the horizon. Caliban bows and scuttles like some dune bird, creeping to his side with half a split coconut in his webbed hands. Ariel’s wrists are locked above his head in cuffs made of twined branches, worked tight by Prospero’s magic. Caliban clumsily offers the coconut to Ariel’s lips, the watery milk spilling in droplets down his chest. Ariel turns his head away. He has no use for food or drink or anything offered from his enemies.

  
“I thought you might—might be thirsty,” Caliban stammers, looking over his shoulder fearfully. Ariel supposes he’s not meant to be here.

  
Disgusting boy, son of a vile woman, forever currying favor. Ariel knows little of his father, one of the mermen that huddle in the caves under the island, scraping their barnacles against the rocks and filing their teeth to points. There is nothing worthy of Ariel’s attention in Caliban, bastard-born under a blood moon, unpowered, cowardly, mortal. He is, nevertheless, company.

  
“What happened to your mother, that Sycorax?” Ariel asks.

  
Caliban fidgets with the coconut. “She, um, died,” he says. “Some years ago.”

  
Good. He’d have preferred it be by his own hands, but a death is a death. Ariel lets his head loll back. The ceaseless island winds play in his hair, loose and tangled about his shoulders.

  
“You know,” Caliban says nervously. There’s a crack—he’s broken the coconut shell. The whitish milk trickles down his palms and wets the hungry sand below. Caliban’s cheeks redden around their scales. “You know, Prospero isn’t a bad master. He’s teaching me things. Like, um, like there’s Leo, the lion!” Ariel follows Caliban’s pointed finger to where a handful of stars are winking into view.

  
“That’s Callisto,” Ariel says dully. She’d been an ugly girl and an uglier bear. At least the stars finally lend her some elegance.

  
“Oh.” Caliban sits down in the sand next to him. “I know I’m stupid, and I don't know anything, but Prospero isn’t so bad, once you get used to him.”

  
“I am not some animal to be broken to the whip,” Ariel snaps.

  
“To him you are,” Caliban says, kelp hair falling over his shoulder in thick ropes as he wraps his arms around his knees.

“Prospero likes a challenge. He won’t stop.” Caliban’s brine-stink mixes with the opening night blossoms. The beach is turning cold with the fading twilight.

  
“Let him try. I will be as the stone cliff to the sea.”

  
“Ariel,” Caliban says, “isn’t that how caves are formed?”

  
+++

  
Now.

  
“I want those spirits, Ariel,” Prospero says. “Dress them up like the gods—this is meant to be an engagement feast, and I want splendor!” There’s a wild edge to Prospero’s voice; the old man has been in a sort of joyful rage ever since the _Treader_ ’s beaching, ever since the nobility paraded onto the beach. Ariel’s never seen him this way, thinks it may be a good sign. The word _freedom_ is still hot on his tongue.

  
“How many, master?” he asks, but Prospero’s preoccupied, craning his neck to see into the hut where his daughter plays chess with her new beau. Ariel slips up to him and loops his arms around Prospero’s neck. Prospero’s hands come to settle on Ariel’s hips.

  
“All of them, as many as you have,” Prospero says distractedly.

  
“Do you love me, master? No?” Ariel breathes.

  
“Dearly, my delicate Ariel,” Prospero says.

  
Ariel bends his head to nuzzle against Prospero’s neck. He smells of human sweat and age. “Enough for freedom?” Ariel asks.

  
Prospero shoves him away, hard enough that he stumbles. “Enough. I will not tolerate cheek, Ariel. You’ll get your freedom when I see fit.”

  
Ariel stares at Prospero with deadened eyes and thinks of all the ways a man can die.

  
“Go.”

  
Ariel’s gone.

  
There are a dozen or more spirits on the island, but the others are weak things, sentient wisps of mist or laughing sea foam, springing in and out of existence in the space of a few decades. The mayflies of the fae. They’re children, a basket of tumbling kittens, careless and foolish but obedient, orbiting Ariel like moths to a flame. And they’re free, free as the circling terns or the hermit crabs in their shells. Not worth enslaving, once Ariel had been won.

  
He feels a great shame being near them.

  
They come to him now, careening through the air, alighting at his feet. Sprites have more mischief than power and these are quick to shift into ghostly copies of his form as they touch down, and he’s soon speaking to a host of giggling, transparent boys with lean torsos and delicate jawlines. They take orders with glee, always eager for a show or a game. One by one he dresses them for parts in Prospero’s mask, as reapers and nymphs and three goddesses, though not too closely on the last. Playing goddess is a dangerous business, offensive and blasphemous, and while Iris might not mind, Ceres and Juno might have them all destroyed for such a thing.

  
Ariel leads his gamboling host back to the engagement party. He leans against a heavy palm to watch their skit, surveying the gathered mortals. There’s Prospero, twitchy and sallow, and that prince Ferdinand, a little plump around the middle, but kind-faced. Prospero’s daughter Miranda is a young thing, dark haired and temperamental, sugar-sweet to her father but imperious with the slaves. The old nobles are all the same, frosty gray hair and lined faces, rich clothing of crushed velvet. A gaggle of lesser men and servants crowd behind, whey-faced against the prospect of dancing spirits.

  
Mortals. All alike, in their way. All stinking of birth and death and fixed timelines, amniotic fluid and grave worms, marking the moons in menstrual blood and the gain and loss of fat. Distasteful. How shaming, to be so enslaved to one.

  
Mars has a brace of spirits who ride with him into battle, creeping through the ranks of men like a disease, a gaseous cloud of panic and terror. Ariel understands the draw to such work, now, understands the satisfaction in laying men low. He thinks of joining them, when he is free, making it Metus and Timor and Ariel the Ill-Used.

  
There is wrath in him to match the gods.

  
+++

  
Then.

  
At last Prospero seems to tire of tormenting him. Ariel is abruptly, entirely ignored. He’s free to wander the island at will, absent all restraints or supervision. Even Caliban stays away, glued to his master’s side like a feeder-fish. Ariel keeps to the north of the island, where the soft sandy beaches give way to jagged rocks and rising cliffs riddled with caves and mud-dome swallow nests. There’s silence here, but for the muttering of the birds and crash-hiss of the breaking waves.

  
Ariel would rather be locked in the tree.

  
He has no powers, none at all, none but this thrice-damned _healing_. Ariel clambers up and down the cliffs, shredding his hands and feet over and over, and it takes hours, hours upon hours to reach the sun-baked summit or the caves at sea level where the mermen laugh and roar lewd suggestions. His boy-body is weak as only humans can be, with muscles that burn and joints that beg for a rest. It heals, it all heals, but not before he feels it, and the feeling shames him.

  
Inside the tree it didn’t matter, but out in the world, out where he sees a spreading pine and _remembers_ skipping from needle to needle in a dance with the morning mist, it’s torture of the cruelest sort.

  
He lays on his back on the clifftop at night, feeling his protesting spine, the chill of the cold rock. He stares up into the starry sky, watches Luna wax and wane and steer her chariot across the black. The fire-bright constellations wheel above him, those histories that Caliban tried so hard to learn, Pegasus, Aquila, and Cygnus in their feathered flock, Draco poised to strike, those witless Ethiopian royals. Ops’s milk is a thick stream through it all. Ariel feels very small, defenseless and humble under the splendid dome.

  
Powerless. Weak. Nearly mortal.

  
Ariel returns to the beach the next morning. Caliban’s face breaks into a smile when he sees him, but it’s Prospero who opens his arms, beckoning Ariel forward until he is close enough to be enfolded into that musky magical cloak. A little dark-haired girl toddles about behind Prospero, waving a palm frond quite as big as she is.

  
“Didn’t I tell you, Caliban,” Prospero says over Ariel’s shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you he wouldn’t last a month?”

  
Ariel burns with fury.

  
“Y-yes, master,” Caliban says.

  
“Have you come to accept your service?” Prospero murmurs in Ariel’s ear, his hand stroking Ariel’s spine as if he were a cat.

  
“My slavery,” Ariel rasps, choking on the words.

  
“Call it what you will,” Prospero says.

  
Ariel pushes away. “Return me my powers.”

  
“I am no green fool, spirit,” says Prospero. “Your powers are vast. I prefer them locked away.”

  
Ariel is desperate. “Give me something, then, anything.” He will not beg for this, but it will be a near thing.

  
“Call me master,” Prospero orders.

  
Hate is a black pit in Ariel’s gut. He wets his lips. Swallows. “Ma—“

  
“On your knees,” Prospero barks. Ariel stares at him, takes in his cloak and his staff and the way he cleaves to both as a remora to a nurse shark. Inch by inch, he sinks down into the sand.

  
“Master,” he whispers from his knees.

  
“My chick. My dainty Ariel,” Prospero says, reaching for him. The old man twists a hand into his hair and pulls back his head. His other hand goes to Ariel’s forehead, palm flat against his skin. There’s a pulse of warmth. Ariel feels power in his veins once more, but faintly, a drop of seasalt in a freshwater stream.

  
It is not enough.

  
+++

  
Now.

  
Caliban is being tortured in the long grasses of the dunes. His cries gurgle with the surf, but no one pays him mind. The old nobles are crowding at last into Prospero’s hut against the glare of the setting sun when Prospero turns to Ariel with a weary smile. “A safe passage, Ariel, calm seas and trade winds to regroup the royal fleet. Do this, and I swear freedom to you.”

  
Prospero has promised freedom so many times. It will never come to pass.

  
“I’ll need a share more of my power for that, master,” Ariel says. “Sustained flight, a greater mastery of the winds, and more of the same, that I might mark you safely to rejoin the boats.”

  
Prospero nods, considering. He crooks a finger and Ariel attends, waiting for his benediction. It comes, hot against his forehead, and he shoots for the sky, panting like a dog to have such wings.

  
“Tomorrow, Ariel!” Prospero calls.

  
“Tomorrow, master,” Ariel promises.

  
+++

  
After.

  
It’s a joy to fly, skimming above the waves, playing tag with dolphins on a sea smooth as glass. The _Treader_ scuds ahead of him, blown along by a single ceaseless wind, slipped thief-like from the cave of Aeolus while the old king slept. The sun glares off the water and schools of flying fish leap for joy. It’s a good day to be a spirit, even one enslaved.

  
The royal fleet isn’t far off, an hour’s work, perhaps. Ariel sees the _Treader_ safely to the fleet’s wooden embrace, then floats above the masts and rigging as greetings and blessings are exchanged and planks levered between ships for boarding. The nobles are heartily welcomed, wrapped with furs and led into cabins. Prospero remains onboard the _Treader_ , standing at the prow like an ugly figurehead. He gazes down into the motionless sea, so clear that manta rays skimming the sand appear just fathoms away.

  
All at once Prospero whips off his burgundy cloak and spins it out away over the water. It seems to float in the air like a discus, and with a toss of one hand Prospero flicks a fireball into its fabric. It blazes like the sun in miniature and is gone, reduced to cinders speckling the water. One by one Prospero’s books follow, some burning in midair, some left to drown in the ocean. Ariel can feel the power draining from Prospero with each destruction, rendering him weaker and weaker until it seems, at last, with only the driftwood staff left to him, they might be equally matched. Prospero stares up at him, his eyes wet.

  
“Ariel, my Ariel. My bird. I free you.”

  
The power hits Ariel in the chest, knocking him out of the sky. The waves close over his head but he breathes still, pulling water into his lungs and finding it equal to air. His blood is on fire, magic and strength seeping into every inch of his form, filling him full, forcing his being to expand to accommodate it all. He is like a falcon with a pulled hood, a hunting dog loosed from his chain. He is raw energy, the meat of the world condensed.

  
An object falls before his face, slowly sinking to the depths of the sea. It is a driftwood staff, broken cleanly in two.

  
Something is happening to Ariel’s face. Muscles stretch, skin pulls, and Ariel realizes he is smiling, grinning madly, ferally. He is still in his boy-skin. He composes himself. If he drops his human form, he will revert to a true elemental, thoughtless, seasonless, meaningless. All in good time. He will enjoy this first, the way humans enjoy things, with carnal delight, gross ecstasy. Ariel kicks his feet once in the water and finds himself in the air, looking down on the ships and their scurrying crew.

  
“Prospero,” he says softly, and the word is writ large in the clouds behind him. The man himself looks up. Ariel throws out his arms. The sea begins to churn, the wind picks up. Dark thunderheads roll in from the horizon. With a gesture Ariel blocks out the sun, and with another he begins the rain. The storm reaches its fury within seconds. The crew panics, racing for the rigging, but it is too late. Waves smash into the boats, tossing them into each other, and the sound of splitting wood mixes with the thunder and the screams.

  
Lightning strikes, fires start, ships sink. Men drown. Ariel can feel the moment when each mortal’s consciousness winks out, lost to the Underworld with no gold to pay the ferryman. Ferdinand is gone, and then Antonio, and then Miranda.

  
Ariel has eyes only for Prospero. The old man clings to the _Treader_ ’s mast, gaze never wavering from Ariel. Ariel is kind. When at last the old man plunges overboard, Ariel follows him down into the depths, floating before him as Prospero’s mouth fills with water and his face turns green. It’s as sweet and fleeting as the kiss of a nymph when the soul leaves his body, but Ariel stays, watching his corpse for days as it slowly bloats, going huge and distended. At last he leaves it for the sharks.

  
The morning is bright and the sun shines gaudily on the water. A dolphin jumps. It is a good day to be a spirit. Ariel sighs deeply, expelling the salt and the pneuma from his body. He lets go. His boy-body falls away. He is limitless, he is everything, he is nothing at all.


End file.
